If You Want This World To See A Better Day

Helloooo!  Is anybody out there?  I wouldn’t blame you if you had abandoned me.  This place has been filled with dust bunnies and cobwebs of late.  But I’m back, Innernetz!  My thesis is done!  My thesis is done!  After my third and final reader signed the This Is The Best Damn Thing I’ve Ever Read form, I called Mr. Dingo with the joyous news and then promptly came home and took a seven hour nap.

I am now free to get into the Christmas spirit.  And so are you — although some of you have gone ahead and done so without me. Didn’t we already talk about this? Innernetz, you are supposed to put your lives on hold until I can catch up.  But I will forgive you, Innernetz, because I love you.  And it’s Christmas.  Christmas is all about forgiveness.  And presents.  I noticed that on my birthday, in spite of my expectations for a mailbox overflowing with birthday bounty, it was remarkably empty.  I don’t blame YOU, Innernetz, I blame my lazy, thieving postman.  I know he stole all your wonderful gifts. But this is Christmas, so, bygones.

Mr. Dingo gave me an early Christmas present this year and it really put me in the holiday spirit.  He took me to see a folk music concert.  I first fell in love with folk music during my freshman year of college.  To be more specific, it was during Christmas break of my freshman year.  You see, I wasn’t always the sharp, with it woman with terrific rain boots that you know today.  In fact, back then you could say that I fell off the turnip truck. Daily.  So when I misread the dates for Christmas break I found myself back at school a week earlier than everyone else. 

The dorm was desolate.  Well, not completely desolate.  There were the girls who always dressed as if they were going to the Renaissance Festival; complete with long flowing velvet gowns and May pole ribbons in their hair.  I don’t know why they were back early.  The family must’ve run out of mutton or something.  Oh, there were also the vampire chicks.  Yeah, sorry iGeneration, you did not invent the fascination with tall, gaunt men with a thirst for blood.  The vampire chicks on campus slept all day, took night classes, dressed in black and listened to The Cure non-stop.  That they did not volunteer to help with the yearly blood drive had me doubting their commitment to their dark lord.

One of my good college friends, Kate, found out about my predicament and saved me from being challenged to a joust or joining the ranks of the not-really-very-dead by whisking me away to her family’s beautiful farm outside of Fort Worth.  The food was incredible.  I swear I put on the Freshman Fifteen during that one week.  The music, however, was the real feast.  Joan Baez, Simon & Garfunkel, The Mamas and the Papas, you name it, they had it.  On LPs.  And although my transformation from fundamentalist to feminist and political activist didn’t take place until many, many years later, the seeds were planted. 

These are the same seeds I’m attempting to plant in the embryonic brain cells of my students.  On one of my mid-semester evaluations, a male student complained that I was a feminist.  Oh, wait, what he actually wrote was, “FEMINIST.” And underlined it.  Three times.  Although it was meant as a rebuke, I took it as a compliment.  I think he was upset because I called him out for saying that women who wore mini-skirts and tank tops “deserved what they got.” He was also a little bent out of shape when, in response to one of my questions he stated, with no irony or awareness that he is a misogynistic jerk, “Because I’m a real man!” I fired back with, “Real men are not afraid of confident women.” Maybe I should put that on a t-shirt.

Don’t even get me started on his views about minorities, gays, lesbians, immigrants, etc.  It really amazes me that in 2008, his views seem to be the norm among my freshmen students.  I have been surprised by their ultra-conservative viewpoints. It’s as if they’ve been raised sucking at the over-inflated ego and rancorous tit of Rush Limbaugh. I’ve had female students tell me that a woman could not be president because she’s, well, a woman.  In another class, I pointed out that men also face discrimination, particularly when it comes to childcare issues and paternity leave.  My class thought this was hilarious!  Why in the world would a man want to take time off to spend with his newborn?  That’s the wife’s job!  Most of them thought it was disgusting to even consider that a gay couple would adopt a child much less have issues in the workplace regarding time off to care for that child.  Sometimes I want to beat my head against a wall.  Most of the time I want to beat their heads against a wall. Repeatedly.

I think, however, it would be best to send them to Kate’s for re-education.  They will come back too stuffed on good ol’ Southern cookin’ to hate anyone except the person who ate the last piece of pecan (pronounced peh-cahn NOT pee-can!) pie.  And maybe listening to music from people passionate about equality and peace will reach some primordial part of their brain. 

Well, this post ended up miles from where I intended.  I wanted to tell you about the man at the concert who kept giving us the Stink-Eye until the usher made him leave.  I also wanted to tell you how incredible the concert was.  We sang, we drank champagne, we sang louder.  My musical tastes now lean more toward the likes of Feist, Brandi Carlile, Vienna Teng, Rob Thomas, Maroon 5, and Gavin Degraw (Innernetz, are you taking notes?) but there’s a special place in my iPod for folk music.

Classes end next week.  I’m preparing the final exams this weekend.  Maybe I should ask them only one question.  A question Yusuf Isalm (formerly known as Cat Stevens) asked back in 1974:  Oh very young, what will you leave us this time?  Then again, he’s a Muslim.  And I’m pretty sure I know what they’d have to say about that.

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